


Tells Your Story

by Elleth



Category: Stand Still Stay Silent
Genre: Crack, Gen, I Don't Even Know, Metafiction
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2016-07-09
Updated: 2016-07-09
Packaged: 2018-07-22 10:57:08
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 3,420
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/7434077
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Elleth/pseuds/Elleth
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>Written for Ginger for the forum exchange: <i>While Sigrun and Emil were on their first outing together as Commander and Right Hand Warrior, there was something that we didn't see. Sigrun found a book, and whatever it was (your choice), it struck a chord with her. What did she do with the book? Which book was it? Why did it make her feel so strongly?</i></p><p>In which Sigrun finds a very special book to call her own.</p>
            </blockquote>





	Tells Your Story

**Author's Note:**

> Ginger, I know you were willing to wait for it, but I hope this was worth it, too. ♥

The tiny red symbol on the book's spine was the first thing that caught Sigrun's attention. 

It'd been on the envelopes from the Nordic Council, and it was painted on the tank's door in the flag colours of the Known World. That in itself wasn't so weird, the selburose and plenty of variations were common enough, but she'd hoped it might be some government thing from the Nordic Council of the Old World (or whatever they'd had then) that would be useful. They weren't _just_ supposed to loot books, after all. They needed a little something to show for their mission to the officials when they got back, and she'd learned all about the value of blackmail material from Trond when she'd been half of Tuuri's height. 

But Sigrun nearly dropped the book when she pulled it from the shelf. There were faces on the front cover arranged around a central title in a language she couldn't understand. Something about _standing still_ , she thought. But more importantly - she knew those faces. One of them stared at her from a mirror every morning. Or rather, she knew most of them - there was a red-headed stranger with a cat on her? - his? - their? head - but the others were all familiar. 

Sort of. 

Except they weren't cartoony paintings when when she usually saw them. 

She didn't know what it all meant. Someone's - possibly Mikkel's? - idea of a terrible prank? Chance? An intervention by the Gods? She'd have to take a closer look to figure that one out. 

Keeping the book closed instead of giving in to every screaming impulse to look at what was inside was one of the hardest things she'd ever done, second only to facing down her very first real troll. She hadn't been able to wait for that either, part sickening nervousness and part unbearable anticipation. She hadn't thought she'd ever feel so close to turning into a hive full of angry bees again, with all her insides buzzing and crawling. She'd have thought they were screaming, but she was pretty sure that'd be the people on the receiving end of that hive of angry bees.

But this was going to be _her_ big discovery. Emil and Lalli were in the room with her; they couldn't know, at least not yet. No time to rifle through it. They'd try to grab that piece of glory for themselves. And she wouldn't be caught dead with a book she wanted for herself except if she had a chance to explain it first; if the others noticed next they might actually expect her to _read_. There had only ever been one book before that she'd actually liked, and that was mostly because it had fights and a dragon and a hero who'd have had her name if she'd ended up being a Sigurd rather than a Sigrun. 

But this - it would be worth keeping. If it wasn't, she could always toss it out. 

Sigrun tried to squirrel the book away while Lalli was dozing on the desk and Emil was busy staring at the shelves with his eyes practically turning into _kronor_ coins. Cute. Real cute. And convenient. Neither of them noticed when she slid it under her coat and tucked it into her belt where it sat like a flat, heavy brick and dug an edge into her stomach. She'd only just done that when Twig started freaking at the ventilation shaft, and it stayed there securely when she found the death room and the nest, when she rescued Emil from being chomped on by a troll, and when they hightailed out of the spot going up on flames behind them. 

The more she thought about it, the weirder it became. When she stripped down after Mikkel's order to decontaminate, she'd almost expected it to be gone, like something that was just too odd to exist. Like the spot they'd explored hadn't been real at all, but there the book was, still digging a corner into her skin. For once it was handy that most of her team, the Finns aside, were prudish enough that they didn't mind if she asked to get cleaned-up on her own.

She tossed her clothes outside for Mikkel to do the laundry, and spritzed a cloud of disinfectant over the volume, just to be safe. Then it went under her pillow until she'd have time to explore the thing without any of the others sticking their paws on her discovery. 

* * *

Between Reynir - the missing face from the cover, and that made her want to run screaming, which she did - showing up in place of food, kitty, a troll chomping down on her arm, Mikkel's mutinisting, what Reynir claimed had been a ghost attack knocking her out, a sjødraug trying to drown her, brains on stilts and setting a course for Odense, she had to wait days and days until she got the chance for a closer look at the book. She'd have forgotten completely about it in favour of the more important things of the moment if not for the hard bump under her pillow that kept reminding her.

The soulless horizons glaring at her through the windshield day by day by day almost made her take it out just so she had something else to look at, but the promise of fame or at least riches from her find made her keep it secret.

Her chance finally came one early morning when she locked the door after Lalli going out to scout the route for the day. She was impressed that their night scout was good for daytime work as well, and less impressed with the rest of her crew sleeping until the cows came home, but instead of kicking their lazy behinds out of bed, she hopped back onto her bunk and pulled out the book. 

Tuuri had it right with the squeeing. Letting it out was better and easier than keeping it bottled up. Sigrun bit down on her knuckle to keep the noise in. She didn't even feel weird getting excited over a book.

Sigrun Eide. Excited. By Reading.

No matter what else she'd have to tell after the mission was over, this'd be the thing no one back at home would ever believe her. Well, to Hel with them. She'd read if she damn well wanted to. 

Sigrun took a deep breath and flipped open the cover. 

After a few desiccated, bleached-out pages, Dalsnes came first of all. She liked the book already, and it had a main saving grace, and that was that it had more pictures than text. She wouldn't even have to read a lot - she'd never seen a whole book like it. Whoever had decided to make that call had made a good one. 

She liked much less that what text there was was a gibberish old-world language that she didn't understand even though the odd word every now and then at least looked sort-of familiar. She was pretty sure her ancestors had spoken Norwegian, not whatever this language was. But one didn't always have a good look at one's own great-grandparents living and breathing and getting soaked and being idiots. All she'd had so far were the pictures on the photo wall behind the Generals' high seat in the mead hall, but she recognized the faces as her great-grandfather Aksel and great-grandmother Sigrun whom she'd been named after. Maybe that was what the book was - a story about the early survivors of the Rash, and someone had picked the expedition party that way? Was there something special about them? 

But the further she flipped - from laughing about Mikkel's crying wimp of an ancestor and the snarky-looking lady who must be his great-grandmother (she seemed like someone she'd like, Sigrun thought) - to the early Finns, their fancy boat and their fancy-looking movie machine ("like radio, but with pictures", her mother had explained to her once) and Emil's boring and arrogant family and someone who had to be Reynir's great-grandfather sinking those poor sods looking for help - the more unlikely that idea felt. They were only ever short stories, and there was a whole lot of book left. 

She resolved to keep an eye on Reynir, though. If his ancestor could do that, their braidy stowaway better not be the one to bring them all down. And if someone had made the book beforehand, they couldn't have known about him joining them, unless that'd been planned, too. 

And then she flipped a page - and looked straight at her organizers. 

_Year 90_. År 90. 

She still stared while the buzzing bees inside her started up screaming again. 

She flipped a random couple of pages. There were Tuuri - and Lalli, asleep under a table. 

A few more. There was Emil - punching a giant in the face. The kid hadn't even exaggerated; she was almost impressed.

More, and there she was, and Mikkel, on Öresund Base. 

_Nope._

Too weird. Way too weird. 

"Nope, nope, nope, that can't be true!" The book landed on the tank floor with a hollow _thump!_ that made Emil yelp and rocket upright out of sleep. It just missed Mikkel, who groaned and sat up to rub his eyes. One of his sideburns had gone squashed against his face on the side he'd slept on. It made him look like a lopsided bear. Tuuri and Reynir took their sweet time waking up, but then they weren't military. They didn't need to be on the lookout for trolls even with their eyes closed. 

Oh, _great_ , it was frowny Mikkel who picked up the book and examined it thoroughly, and his eyebrows climbed so high it looked like a knot of caterpillars were waggling around on his forehead.

Sigrun felt like a naughty child suddenly, and leapt out of bed to snatch the book from his hands, but he held on tight and unfortunately Muscles still was stronger than her. 

"Sigrun, what is thi-" 

"Mine. It's mine. Give it back. Captain's orders!" 

"I did not take you for a bibliophile. Is that part of our loot?" 

"It's mine is what it is. I dunno yet, I haven't had a chance to look close." 

Mikkel sighed, but he did not let go. "Is it properly decontaminated?" 

"Yes, yes, I took care of that. But look at the thing, that's us on the cover! And there's more about us inside! It's our trip!"

Mikkel did her the favour of glancing down at the faces showing between his fingers. His grip didn't loosen one bit. 

"That cannot be right, Sigrun, and you know that as well as I do. Tuuri is the one documenting our mission, and considering the cost of ink and paper and labour going into a pictorial sort of documentation - even if someone else had been taking note of our progress, it would not be possible to have it drawn and printed on such a tight schedule; any artist would need… well over a year, I should say, producing that, if she worked herself into exhaustion on a prohibitive schedule. We have been on this mission no more than -" 

" - _she?_ " 

Mikkel tapped the cover. Sigrun craned her neck to decipher the name merged into one of the ornaments. "Fine, she." 

"My point stands, this is neither in the condition to be recent, nor would it be possible for anyone to create in the time we have been on the road. Nor is this a language you would publish a book like this in these days. Unless I am mistaken, we are speaking English here. It served much the same function as a lingua franca as Icelandic does nowadays." 

"English, huh?" Sigrun wasn't going to let herself look stupid, that was one she'd actually heard about. "I guess. I thought from the beginning this must be something else. Not that you non-believer would believe me, but this Minna Sundberg was probably a mage. She had visions of us and drew them into a book before the Old World crashed down. And it'd make sense that she'd want to warn as many people as possible with using a language all the skalds back then understood." 

Mikkel massaged the bridge of his nose and Sigrun couldn't help a stab pride at the exasperation in the gesture. Maybe he was finally coming around to what she knew was fact. He opened this book much as she had done, and browsed through a few pages, stopping at Lalli vanishing into the dark of their first night in the Silent World. "I have no explanation at this point to say anything more about the origin of this book, but it looks to be reasonably accurate." 

"I knew it!" 

"Sigrun. I did not mean your mage theory; your belief in mages did not exist in pre-Rash times, it was only after the outbreak that your cult of the Norse Gods gained traction, I meant -" 

"Yes you did, you can admit it." 

A rustle of clothes announced Emil coming to join them, padding over the floor on bare feet. He was beaming in a way that Sigrun knew he'd figured something out, or at least thought he had. "I know what this is! It's a fourth window!"

"A what?" 

"My tutors talked about it! It's - it's a window that lets us… uh… it's complicated. It's _like_ a window that isn't there and if you break it, you can see that everything is just a story. And you can talk to real people! We're the ones who aren't actually real. The Old-Worlders knew, they had technology that let them do it all the time. It was called _Windows_ , too. I guess we just forgot because they told us to - they became scared we'd come out of the story to have a better life after they let the Rash loose on us. And now someone gave us this so we'd remember! The mission is a success already!" 

Mikkel pulled a face like he was chewing on a lemon. Sigrun couldn't blame him, she wasn't sure what Emil was talking about, but even jubilant as he sounded, she knew it was far too weird to be true. She was almost tempted to look into the book to see what expression _she_ was making that moment.

Emil used the chance to grab the book from Mikkel's hands and lifted it to his mouth.

"Thaaank you! Thank you for giving us this!" 

"Stop that! You'll get spit all over it!" Tuuri pushed herself into the circle the three of them made, and tried to take the book from Emil. From the corner of her eye Sigrun also noticed a red head of stick-up hair poking over her shoulder with the usual clueless smile - Reynir had come to join them. Poor kid probably only understood a fraction of what was going on, as usual, but this time they were in the same boat: Tuuri kept on talking. Sigrun understood the words at least, and even though Tuuri's explanation made a bit more sense than Emil's, it still wasn't a lot of sense on the whole. 

"... so it doesn't work that way. It's all imaginary." 

"I just said that!" 

"Not like _that_ , I mean the whole concept. It's just something to describe things that happen in books or stories or plays, if a character talks to the audience. If we were in a story and I said hi to readers, that'd be that. And it's a wall, not a window." 

"I _saw_ a _Windows_ machine. They have them in every museum in Sweden that I've been to, they just can't get them to work. But I guess you don't have museums in Finland." 

Tuuri looked mortified and bit her lip, and she was staring at the book so dejectedly that Sigrun reached over to ruffle her fuzzy hair. Even her hair-poof looked like it was drooping. Emil crossed his arms.

"Cheer up, both of you. It doesn't really matter _who_ tells our story or if it's real - but if it's in this book we'll see how it goes! With some luck we can just open the last page and see us roll around in a pile of money because this whole mission smells like success to me, and I have a good nose for that sort of thing." 

Mikkel shook his head. Tuuri gave her a weak smile. Emil rolled his eyes and winced when she gave his hair a sharp tug. "No rolling your eyes at your Captain, or I'll dump you in a troll nest next time." 

He grumbled, but didn't object when she reclaimed the book and flipped through it eagerly until she found a drawing that showed her nose in all its glory, and told herself to keep the page number in mind. 

"Here. Page 279*. Nose. That's a good nose, see?" 

Emil looked at her like she'd lost it at long last. 

"You _like_ the way you look in that!?"

"Yeah! If my nose really looked like that, I'd have used it for stabbing trolls already. I wish it did! Any wimp can headbutt a troll until it dies, but stabbing one with your nose, that'd be badass!" Sigrun beamed and clapped Emil's shoulder. "And you wouldn't even risk losing it! It's on your face, you'd always have it with you!"

"Until a troll bites it off." 

"Then I'd go back to stabbing with my knife! Or maybe with my chin." 

Emil made a noise that bordered on disbelief while he thought of something to say. "Right. I guess at least my hair looks… decent enough." 

"It's got the sparkles, what more do you want?!"

"I'd like to know what happens in the end, actually," Tuuri piped up, her voice higher than usual with nervousness. "Will Onni be okay? Are we all going to make it out alive?"

"I'm not going to let anyone get eaten or rashified on my watch," Sigrun said. "You don't have to fret, but let's check just in case. I want to see what I look like rolling around in that money I smelled." 

In the end, the end was… underwhelming. A real stomach-dropping disappointment that almost - almost - made Sigrun want to throw the book out of the tank and let it rot in some puddle. It was useless. Absolute garbage. Whichever of the gods - she couldn't help thinking it had to have been Loki - put it her way was probably laughing his godly ass off now. She grumbled and stared down at the page following their rushing out of the very spot where she'd found it, it was all there down to Emil being sick and the rest of them relaxing in the back of the tank later - except in the book, she _hadn't_ found the book, and it made her head spin, since most everything else was the same way, and some of Lalli's dream-shenanigans that she had to admit looked pretty, and a drawing of Tuuri's workspace until...

_End of Book I_

"So… that's it? It's not complete, we're on our own? What comes next?" Emil whined in her ear. 

"It may actually be a blessing that we do not know what expects us," Mikkel offered. "You are already growing far too dependent on the idea alone."

"Yeah, yeah. I know what I think of that. Emil, grab your Cleanser stuff, we're going back there and checking if there's more of our story! Tuuri, turn the tank around!" 

"Uhhh. We're… more than a week out from Copenhagen?" Tuuri suggested. 

Emil winced. "And I… kind of blew up that place because we managed to stir up a nest and there was a huge troll that drooled _teeth_ on me and was trying to eat us?" He snatched the book from Sigrun's hands and flipped back through the pages, stabbing a finger at the spread detailing that event. "Right here, this one!" He hastily snapped the book shut again, thrust it from from himself, and screwed his eyes closed, like he wished he hadn't looked. 

Sigrun shrugged. She'd never let a setback set her back for long, in her line of work she couldn't afford to, and it was just books that had gone up in flames there, if there had been any more, not their actual story. "Okay. There's a million things I haven't done - just you wait. I don't need a book telling me what to do. I _know_ that history has its eyes on me." 

She chose to ignore Mikkel's snarky comment, or she might just have punched him.

**Author's Note:**

> * [page 256](http://www.sssscomic.com/comic.php?page=256) in the online version.
> 
> If there are things here that look like Hamilton quotes, that's exactly what they are. :D Many thanks to Anna for her betaing magic!


End file.
